Canny lass

ThanksSymptoms! I'll get him onto that right away!

I can't remember tomatoes either. I can't remember ever seeing a greenhouse. Plenty of Coldframes though for propogating bedding plants. We grew, as well as leeks,potatoes and cabbages, sprouts, peas, onions, carrots lettuce and radishes. On the floral side it was margarits, asters, chrysanthemums and lupins. (The latter grow wild here and are classed as a weed)! Some plants were Always left to go to seed for planting the following year and All garden waste was composted to improve the soil. No garden centres in those Days!

Couldn't agree more Brett! It's all about looking at things in today's light and making up your own mind! Things change and so can our opinions. What was good for our fathers and grandfathers isn't necessarily right for us.The main thing is that we use our right to vote rather than sit at home complaining. Even a spoiled vote says more than no vote at all!

and for chilblains, Maggie. There's a Lovely Word. Do people still get them?

Now this is interesting, Symptoms. We are plagued with foxes here. Must it be men's urine and what do I do with it? Do I spray it round the boundaries of the property, over the entire garden or do I just get the old man to have his morning pee here and there and everywhere? Golden showers? I'm not going to ask! In this neck of the woods it means something that would be considered unfit for inclusion on this site.

I'm particularly intrigued by the cure for ringworm! "Find a pot of a man's urine". The Word 'find' suggests that this should be the urine of an unknown male. We'll I mean, if it was your old-man's urine you wouldn't need to 'find' it. Presumably you would know where he kept his pot. How does one go about 'finding' pots of urine - and, once found, how does one know with certainty that it's a man's urine? What's the magic ingredient in male urine that's not to be found in female urine? And, finally would male urine found in anything else than a pot do the trick? I think we may need to start a new topic for this one.

Good luck with the noise-making tomorrow. I'll be with you in spirit if not in body and will be making a noise here in the garden at 12 noon. Took Malcolm's advice and will have something noisy with me - 7 grandchildren!

Great pics HPW!!

Sorry I missed it, Brett. Been gadding about doing my thing. Hope it was good.

Thanks Ovalteeny. I'd never have guessed myself!

'tom' ? Explain please.

I don't rule out invasions completely, Pilgrim. I feel quite sure that first encounters with Britain were more in the nature of 'raping, pillaging and plundering' There is evidence of that in both languages. Language development/change is a great mirror of history. Just look at the Word Viking. We find it in both the English and Scandinavian languages today just as we did in OE and ON. The OE Word wicing meant 'pirate'. The ON Word vikingr most probably meant 'Creek-dweller'. What interests me most is that the OE Word is recorded long before the scandivian people set foot in Britain. That these people were then referred to as wicing suggests that somebody saw their arrival as an intrusion rather than a friendly visit for a cuppa and a digestive. And let's not forget that they came very near to conquering the whole of England. Danelaw prevailed everywhere north of a boundary that ran from London to Chester so there was a fair bit of battle going on as well.

Thanks Smudge. I have a full set frrom Goth. uni but they don't paste in either. Nothing pastes in for me. Sometimes I've written a longer text in a Word document and tried to paste the whole text but I've Always had to start over and write it again on the site. I Think it's the price I'm paying for finally getting rid of my wayward capital letters (well. almost gone), crossings out and underlinings.

Pilgrim, just a couple of Points you may find interesting. You are quite right in thinking that "that lot mainly went round the top of Ireland and came into 'England' from the west". However, the 'lot' you are referring to came from the area which we today call Norway. Those Vikings who came from the areas today known as Sweden and Denmark, entered 'England' from the east arriving mainly at Humberside. Some made the journey via France and arrived in the South of England. They did however leave their mark, and not an insignificant mark, on the English language. One way of assessing such influence is to look at the number of borrowings (loan Words). Scandinavian borrowings are relatively few, when compared to borrowings from Latin, German and French. There is a very good reason for that. Old Norse and Old English are almost mutually intelligable languages. It would not have been difficult to pick up each other's languages. The similarities, particularly in the vocabulary, are so many that should you put two documents, one in either language, in front of any language historian he would be able to read both even though only schooled in one. Lack of borrowings does not, in this case, reflect lack of influence. There was simply no great need to borrow. I support wholeheartedly your theory that most influence came about through the two languages rubbing shoulders on a social and business level rather than through battle. The ON loan words that linger on in English today, some 2 000 of them, reflect domesticity rather than political power, suggesting that the Vikings lived peaceably side by side with the Brits for several hundred years. They also show the closeness of the relationship between the two Cultures as many of the borrowings belong to the central core of the vocabulary- family relationships, body parts etc. Even more interesting is that English has borrowed some grammatical Words from ON. Several conjunctions are ON in origin and so are several pronouns. It's very rare that these are borrowed in any language and therefore a sign of very strong influence. Some of these grammatical words, like they, them and their are first used in the northern dialects. Borrowings may have been relatively few but there were other influences on the English vocabulary brought about by the initial difficulties in daily exchanges. Sometimes they used an ON pronunciation for an OE word. This is the reason why the English words church and ditch becomes kirk and dike in some areas. Sometimes they would use an OE Word but with the meaning of an ON Word. Loaf and bread are examples of this. OE hlaf (meaning bread) became loaf. while OE bread meant fragment. ON braud, on the other hand, did mean bread so we've ended up with an OE word that has taken on an ON meaning. Last but not least some ON inflections have found there way into English words, having been mistakenly understood as part of the stem. That Little 't' at the end of words like thwart, want and scant or the -sk in bask are both inflectional endings from ON. There is plenty of evidence of this type of influence. So, the number of borrowings is not always the best tool with which to measure influence on a language. The vocabulary of a language changes quite quickly. Today, it's changing at a gallop rather than a trot. For this we can thank the Internet and social media. A newly coined word has done two laps of the globe before you can say Bob's your uncle and the need for brevity in script has increased enormously thanks to text messages and Twitter.

Most Town and/or County Councils have some sort of planning department that decide on street names for newly built streets, roads, Squares etc. It should be easy to find out when the name Hollymount was given and maybe even why.

Welcome to the forum Christine and good luck with your search for information. They're a knowledgeable lot here. Hope someone can help.

Thanks for the feedback. It's obviously not who I thought it was. Losing a good mate is awful. Chin up.

Eggy, SmudgeITB, Thanks but that's exactly what I've tried. I can't paste anything here. Back to the drawing board!

It was eth I was meaning. How did you manage to write that here? I'v tried several times and different methods to use phonetic symbols on this site but Always without success. In OE they were using a mish mash of alphabets. The clerics used mostly a Celtic version of the Latin alphabet but, necessity being the mother of invention, they eked it out with a few letters from the Anglo Saxon runic alphabet. Eth and d, being similar in appearance and sound often changed places. Interesting today is that you can see 'dd' in the Welsh language (Celtic). 'dd' is one letter of the alphabet. 'd' is another letter. *dd' is pronounced 'th' as in Think.

Not surprising really. There was an OE letter that looked like a number 6 written backwards. (sorry, I can't reproduce it here). It could be pronounced as 'd' or as 'th'. The sounds 'd' and 't' are in fact exactly the same as far as the use of the speech organs are concerned. Your lips, teeth and tongue will move into exactly the same position for both sounds. The only difference is that your vocal chords vibate on 'd' and not on 't'. Most sounds come in pairs like this one voiced (with vibration) and one not. You can test it by saying the sounds 'd' and then 't' with your hand over your adams apple. try again with the pairs p and b, and k and g. Tell me to shut up whenever you wish.

Would he have had a sister called Christine?

Maggie, you ask when Netherton became Nedderton. I've Always known it as Nedderton, or to be more accurate as 'the village". That's how it was always referred to when I was a Child. I recently found a photo of a programme for a musical evening held in Netherton Colliery 1948 where the' main act' was a Choir from Nedderton. In charge of proceedings was no other than the Rev. Osgathorpe from St. Cuthbert's Bedlington so it's definitely 'our' Netherton. You'll find the photo at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/131522258@N07/17042919922/ Seems we were quite a sophisticated bunch!

Does anybody know anything about this? http://donmouth.co.uk/womens football/soup kitchen soccer.html I'm particularly interested in the Netherton Team. I remember football matches between men and women at Netherton in the fifties. The women were in full gear but the men wore long nighties and wellies. I'm not sure but I Think it had something to do with raising Money for the yearly outing to Whitley Bay.

Get the kettle on! You'll be needing a cup of tea. This might just be a wee bit long. First of all I give my apologies to Mawer. His name was Allen - not Alan, as I previously wrote. Having now read the complete work I think we have to knock any ideas of the Venerable Bede's involvment on the head. Sorry Maggie! Firstly, it wasn't only he who had the name Bede. It appears to have been quite a common name at the time. Secondly, -ing would appear to be purely genitive in function and monks didn't own anything. Thirdly, as Bede entered the monastery at the age of seven he was unlikely to have set up any homestead and place names of the era were topographical or denoted ownership. Mawer's work is a tough read, not least because of the compositor's interpretation of the original work, which was almost certainly hand written. I give you a synopsis of the relevant points: Mawer, in discussing the -ington names of Northumberland, refers to an article on the early settlement of Northumbria written by one Dr. Woolacott. This appeared in the Geographical Journal (year of publication unknown to me). According to Woolacott the effects of the glacial period had a great bearing on the location of early settlements. Glacial surface deposits, he claimed, lay thickest "along the washes" and "on higher ground escarpments rise like islands from beneath the superficial deposits ". In Northumbria especially, this had considerable influence in determining the location of minor settlements as it was easy to obtain water in these places. With reference to Topley (no information as to who Topley may be) he says that the Northumbrian villages with -ing "are old settlements and either stand on sand and gravel hillocks lying on the boulder clay, or on exposures of sandstone which rise above the uniform level of the surface formations. A large number of the pit villages, which are in many cases merely enlargements of the ancient settlements belong to the latter class". Mawer tested this theory by completing a fresh survey of the topography. The theory, he said, "would appear to hold good for Acklington, Bedlington, Cramlington" and half a dozen other named places. All were situated on high ground where the geology of the area favoured the occurance of springs. However, this could not be applied to Choppington, he said, as it had a nearby stream from which water could be obtained. Taking all the evidence into consideration Mawer concluded that this theory was proved, at least for East Northumberland, where the number of -ington names on this type of ground was far too large to be due to pure coincidence. As for the genitive (posessive) nature of -ing Mawer names three different types: -inga - genitive plural, -ingas - genitive singular and , by far the most common - simple -ing. Various theories, ranging from number of syllables in the personal name to loss of inflectional suffixes have been put forward to explain the differences but all have subsequently been rejected in favour of one Professor Moorman's explanation that -ing denotes posession. According to Mawer the theory has been "confirmed beyond a doubt" by the examination of Old English evidence. Such place names, he says, are simply the farm, clearing or whatever it may be, of or belonging to a man bearing a certain name. So, there we have it. If you fancy wading through the whole book you'll find it at: http://archive.org/stream/cu31924028042996/cu31924028042996 djvu.txt

Anglo Norman it was Fourgee! It became clearer later in the book.